GIANT BABY BOY.

Evening Star, Issue 21992, 30 March 1935, Page 19

GIANT BABY BOY.

FATHER ON RELIEF WORK Believed to bo the world’s largest baby, Leslie Bowles, the sou of Mr and Mrs 11. Bowles, of Lowestoft, Suffolk, presents a problem in weight which doctors so far have been unable to solve. At the age of two years and nine months Leslie, who is little more than 3ft in height, weighs 7st 71b. He weighed 71b at birth. The child has small feet and hands and tapering fingers, and his increase in weight is put down to increase in fat, and not to skeleton over-development. Mr and Mrs Bowles are on the small side, as are also their five-year-old son and their 6[-year-old daughter. But the mother states that her grandmother weighed 1(3 or 37 stone. Her sister, she says, weighed Bst when she was five, and her husband’s brother could not walk because of his weight until he was five. “ Leslie has just the same to eat as we do,” Mrs Bowies told an interviewer. “ Ho is lucky to have what he can get —bread and margarine, vegetables—he always has plenty of greenstuff—and fish when we can afford it. My husband has been on relief work since last July, and is a fish packer b.y trade. So. that is all Leslie has, except for a cup of tea. You could not have a better tempered boy. If he does get into a childish temper he is strong enough to knock me down. He is as strong as a lion.” Owing to his weight the boy cannot yet walk or run about like other children of his age; but, his mother added, “he is perfectly healthy, eats well, and lias never had an illness except for the usual minor cold. I have been advised that he should go into hospital for treatment, but I do not want to part with him. In fact, my husband and 1 are rather proud of having what must he the biggest baby in the world.” Leslie can just get into his father’s sweaters, and his father’s trousers—cut off at the legs, but let out at the waist —just fit him. According to Mr Bowles, Leslie’s brain is exceptionally quick. Ho sings hymns to himself, says pieces of poetry, and asks innumerable questions.